decadeof

The recently released High Life is perhaps the first film by septuagenarian Claire Denis with a plot fit for an elevator pitch: “Robert Pattinson fucks in space.” Of course, one doesn’t watch Denis’s sensuous, involuted films for their plots, which tend to be shattered into shards, leaving viewers to sift through and make sense of the pieces. One watches Denis’s films for the way story is insinuated through an enveloping amalgamation of sight and sound — or more specifically, for…

Eli Roth has long thrived in a culture that does not seem to understand, nor like, him. This isn’t to say that he’s lacked success at the box office, nor that he doesn’t have a devoted, cult-ish fanbase; but rather, Roth’s work is consistently…

It would be difficult to summarize the aesthetic of M. Night Shyamalan’s work of the past decade in one fell swoop, but there are a number of characteristics typical of his preoccupations which we can see as forming a link. He makes clear distinctions between…

In the U.S., the films of Japanese director Naomi Kawase have often been met with apprehension, not accorded the same respect as other celebrated works from the European film festival circuit. Perhaps this is because it’s hard to formulate an academic assessment of films that unabashedly invite intimacy: Kawase…